System software
The Central cluster is based on Centos 7 which contains many default packages required for compiling software.
User software
Users are welcome to install any software they require into their home directories or available space in the shared group directory (Note that the group directories offer much more space). Researchers may find it best to maintain their own software in the group directory as many packages are compiled with group specific optimizations which the global module packages may not have. The shared group directory is generally the best place for privately licensed software as well.
Follow this link for information regarding other package installation methods including Spack, Anaconda and Singularity containers.
IMSS installed software
There are large numbers of packages that are helpful to all users, but not available from the base system. For these types of packages, IMSS will compile and install them and make then available via "modules" which can be loaded to add them to your environment. These include things like MPI, compilers, libraries, and other applications.
If there is something that you think should be made available to all users in this manner, email help-hpc@caltech.edu and we can see about installing it for you. To see what is already installed, you can run "module avail" to get a current list. If you think something is miscategorized, please let us know.